


Timeline for -A and an Explanation of the Early-on Divergences between -A and -Ą

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: What is says on the tin. Timeline will be updated as fic-postings progress.This one’s a meta-“fic” post! If you aren’t following my Gravity Falls fic, or the (-A) and/or (-Ą) and/or (>>A) series, please ignore this one.If youarefollowing any of these series, then here’s the TL;DR:--If you are following -A or >>A, please take a look at the timeline in Ch. 1.--If you are following >>A, please consider reading Ch. 2 for the “mini-spoilers” for the background I haven’t written yet, which largely deals with the -Ą characters. (I’ll be writing fics that handle some of that stuff eventually, but the events not yet explicitly written aren’t meant to be a secret in the meantime or anything.)--If you are following -A, please go and read thenewly addedauthor’s notes at the beginning of each fic in the -A series, for the low-down on the ‘in-between fic events’, for some actual context of what’s been going on in that dimension! (...Yay? ^_^;; ) ...Alternately, you can just wait until the next fic in -A comes out, where I’ll be re-posting all those quick-summaries all in one place in the beginning author’s notes there.





	1. Timeline for -A (versus -Ą)

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Author’s Note, 2018-Jul-29:_  
>   
>  Anybody who reads my stuff knows I don’t generally post meta-timeline stuff for my fics. But this time, in terms of two series I’ve been recently posting fics in (-A and >>A), there’s been a **lot** of expressed confusion and frustration from a reader and fellow-author, whose views I trust _greatly_ when it comes to writing fic. And this is very much my bad. Her constructive criticism of the fics in these series is absolutely **dead on-the-mark**. In (a rather cringing) retrospect, I now realize that I’ve been leaving waaaaay too much stuff out of what’s been going on in the -A and -Ą dimensions, for events and character reactions and such to make proper sense in context -- literally to the point that the interpretation and thrust of the fic progression that I thought was being conveyed… wasn’t. _At all._ What I was trying/wanting to have the reader feel was so severely lacking, in fact, that most reader expectations on several pretty big plot points are likely reversed from what I’m _actually_ going for, here. I haven’t been conveying what I want to convey properly in my writing for these ones. And that is very much a problem.
> 
> So I’m trying to fix that now. I’m starting by putting this timeline-thus-far up on AO3, with basic background information on the -Ą dimension in order to help people differentiate the -Ą dimension from the -A dimension. I’ve also reordered the fics in the -A series to put them in proper chronological order, and added AN:s at the beginning of each of them that explain (1) the general time-of-occurrence of the events in the fic, _along with_ (2) some “general-specifics” on what’s been happening in the dimension with these folks between the end of the previous fic and the start of current one. (There’s other stuff that I’ll be adding to the ending AN’s later, that will basically amount to specific callouts and warnings not to trust Bill’s POV, because he’s an insane sociopathic little shit whose reasoning processes and perception of events are _highly_ flawed… but those are coming later. Basic background comes first!)
> 
> If anything comes out confusing, or if any of you, dear readers, have questions after this, please do comment and let me know -- I’ll be happy to add to, update, and revise things accordingly! This is meant to be an enjoyable reading experience for folks, not a confusing or frustrating one. *nods*
> 
> Thank you for your patience with my madness! :) I really do swear that there is method in it...

\---

===================================  
== **TIMELINE FOR -A (versus -Ą):** ==  
===================================

 **Day 1:**  
**afternoon:**  
\-- **(CONVERGENT POINT -- Bill is summoned by cultists, gets nabbed by Ford)**  
\-- [Don't Know Where, Don't Know When…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573628)  
\-- [But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952116)

**(DIVERGENCES IN CHARACTERS’ MOTIVATIONS BETWEEN -A AND -Ą BEGIN DUE TO DIFFERENCES IN MENTALITY, DIFFERING IDEAS AND CHOICES LEAD TO MINOR DIFFERENCES IN EVENTS THAT SNOWBALL LATER)**

**Day 2:**  
**mid-morning**  
\-- _“Stan brings tickles and tackles to Bill’s ‘magic fight’… and wins, because Stan’s not an idiot” (briefly summarized objectively in the ending author’s notes to[Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), mulled over subjectively by Bill mid-fic in [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), and thought about subjectively by Bill **again** in [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627))_

...

 **Day 6 (or 7-ish):**  
**afternoon/evening:**  
\-- [Glitches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928743)

...

 **Day 11:**  
**morning through noon-ish:**  
\-- [Aggression](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928890)  
\-- _Necessity Ch. 1 (not yet posted)_  
\-- [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251)  
\-- _Necessity Ch. 2 & 3 (not yet posted) (concurrent with first half of Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies)_  
\-- [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594)

**(SEVERE DIVERGENCE POINT IN INTERACTIONS / EVENTS BETWEEN -A AND -Ą)**

**afternoon:**  
\-- _Damage / Fallout (-A only, not yet posted)_  
**late-night:**  
\-- [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627) (-A only)  
\-- [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063542) (-A only)  
\-- [Respect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422541) (-A only)

 **Day 12:**  
**mid-morning:**  
\-- [The Idiot Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422892) (-A only)  
\-- _Exodus (-Ą only, not yet posted)_

\---


	2. Minorly-Spoiler-y Backstory -- An Explanation of the Early-on Divergences between -A and -Ą

\---

NOTE: The timeline for -Ą in terms of events looks largely the same as -A from the outside, up until the end of [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594). _Events diverge **greatly** following that._

(And when I say “from the outside”, I mean that the background of the two Bills in terms of how they handled things in the past is v-e-r-y different, so the “difference in terms of events”, that basically has to do with these differences in mentality? Is about equivalent to saying:  
“Person X went to the store and bought milk for a cake they’re going to bake.”  
And then saying, ‘oh, by the way...’:  
“Person X-A went to the store and bought milk for a cake they’re going to bake, because he wants to _show_ it to Person Y and wants to eat it in front of _them_ , because he _wants to_ piss them off.”  
And the differences in mentality between Person X-A and Person X-Ą would be made apparent by then saying, as a follow-on, ‘just so you know…’:  
“Person X-Ą went to the store and bought milk for a cake they’re going to bake, because he wants to _give_ it to Person Y, and wants _Person Y_ to eat it in front of _him_ , because he _knows Person Y is lactose-intolerant, and that when Person Y ostensibly finds out later, it’ll do **far worse** than just_ piss them off...”)

\---

To sum up a lot of backstory of -Ą (versus -A) without major spoilers...

\-- -A Bill is pretty confident in himself and his abilities, and has a decent amount of self-control when he wants to exert it (well, relative to other Bill’s, anyway). -Ą Bill is far less self-confident and has far less self-control than -A Bill, for reasons. (-Ą Bill’s personal ‘Dreamscape’ is also taking longer to heal than -A Bill’s is, for reasons.)

\-- This leads to -A Stan deciding to “merely” try to “caretaker” -A Bill, who is a very independent triangle thanks-ever-so-much and chafes at “too-restrictive” oversight a _lot_ in a very obvious manner. (That sort of thing would be a “deal-breaker” for him, as it were.) Meanwhile in -Ą, -Ą Stan realizes that -Ą Bill is a complete freaking mess. And because -Ą Bill is... fairly well-primed to be(...) a lot more dependent on others than -A Bill is, and because -Ą Stan isn’t stupid, -Ą Stan decides to _adopt_ -Ą Bill instead, because if Stan’s doing this thing then -Ą Bill clearly needs a lot more stability than having just a “mere caretaker” implies, or -Ą Bill will walk.

\-- Where -A Bill wakes up and leaves the bedroom in [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627), -Ą Bill sleeps like a dead person and doesn’t wake up in -Ą. [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627), [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063542), and [Respect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422541) **don’t happen** in -Ą. (Thus, [The Idiot Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422892) doesn’t happen the next day, either.) What happens _instead_ of [The Idiot Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422892) involves not-so-great things happening that next day, -Ą Bill deciding to not-quite-”retreat” to his and Stan’s shared bedroom... and -Ą Ford kicking in the door to enter the bedroom after him. This *cough* “causes problems” and basically forces -Ą Stan to decide that continuing to “force”/convince -Ą Bill to stay at the Shack is just not going to work anymore. Not and keep -Ą Bill and the rest of -Ą Stan’s family from having a confrontation that leaves potentially none of them alive and still-breathing afterwards, anyway. And as far as -Ą Stan is concerned, staying in the same dimension is out because -Ą Ford will just follow -Ą Bill (and -Ą Stan) wherever they try to go and keep forcing a fight with -Ą Bill. “Things happen” and -Ą Bill and -Ą Stan leave the dimension together. They dimension jump-jump-jump-jump-jump a bit in rapid succession until they are someplace not completely immediately unsafe. “More stuff happens”, and about a week and a half (personal time-line) later, -Ą Stan talks -Ą Bill into trying to bring them both back to their dimension for at least a little while, figuring that -Ą Ford has probably cooled off enough that maybe they can jump in someplace a bit farther away from the Shack and find a way to get away with checking on the kids -- because -Ą Stan wants to see the kids and make sure they’re doing okay. -Ą Bill and -Ą Stan end up in >>A instead (...for reasons…), and things progress in the >>A dimension from there, in [The Feral Kitten Pile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15425244).

\---


	3. General Timeline of -A -- FULL VERSION (will be updated as fics progress!) -- last updated 2019 Feb 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changelog:
> 
> \-- first posted on 2019 Feb 10 (Day 1 through Day 44 with placeholders for several upcoming WIP fics and chapters)

**_ Previously, in Dimension 46’\\-A… _ **

Sometime in the afternoon of a lazy day of early summer, not quite one year after Weirdmageddon occurred, marks Day 1 of Bill Cipher’s return. This is because a bunch of cultists do just that -- they apparently somehow manage to make Bill Cipher return.

\-- and then [Don't Know Where, Don't Know When…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573628) happens --

\-- and then [But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952116) happens --

And the afternoon of Day 1 ends.

Several days pass by, with Bill sleeping something like ‘eight hours out of every ten’ for the first couple days (Day 1 through Day 3), and Stan lets him do it. (Stan’s pretty sure Bill might have a concussion, actually.)

Mid-morning of Day 2 though, Stan leaves the room for a bit, and Bill ‘escapes’ out through the bedroom window. Bill calls Stan out, trying to ‘take on’ Stan with magic outside of the barrier... and that goes poorly for Bill. (This event is talked about in the ending author’s notes of [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), in [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), and in [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627).) End result: Bill basically ends up collapsing from exhaustion at the end of things, and Stan ends up lifting him up over a shoulder, carrying him back inside, and unceremoniously dumping him back into bed.

In the evening of Day 2, Stan starts trying to put together with Bill what they will eventually refer to in shorthand as a ‘mutual nonaggression agreement’, and Bill seems grudgingly open to going along with it because of what happened that afternoon.

It takes about a day-and-a-half (until mid-morning of Day 4) for Stan to get the initial structure of said agreement worked out with Bill, to a point where he’s at least reasonably certain that he could safely leave the kid alone in the same room with somebody else (who isn’t him) for more than a minute without somebody ending up dead. (Not that Stan plans on leaving the kid alone in the same room with anybody else right away.)

Because of this, Stan decides it’s time to start having Bill out of the bedroom, eating food with everybody else at mealtimes, and brings Bill out to the kitchen for lunch on Day 4; nothing goes _completely_ sideways and wrong in a way that Stan can’t handle, and nobody dies, so Stan’s been making Bill eat meals in the kitchen with everybody else ever since.

Ford, conversely, didn’t show up for breakfast the morning of Day 4, and has been pulling a “vanishing act” on them at mealtimes ever since. Stan hasn’t really seen Ford since the evening of Day 3, and assumes that it’s a combination of Ford (a) being too busy with tracking down the cultists who brought Bill back to be bothered to show his face around the Shack, and (b) not wanting to be anywhere near Bill Cipher if he doesn’t have to be.

However, Ford is actually spending almost all of his time downstairs in his basement lab, preoccupied with trying to find a way to kill Bill that doesn’t require use of the Zodiac Circle.

Throughout this entire time period (the afternoon of Day 1 through Day 5), Stan has been largely staying in the same room with Bill, almost all the time -- and most of the time that Bill’s been awake, they’ve been talking extensively. One of the only times Stan consistently isn’t in the same room as Bill during this time period is when Bill is using the bathroom; he “just” waits in the hallway within sight of the door for Bill, and he lets Bill spend as much time in there as he wants. Day 6 is the first day that Stan stops escorting Bill to the bathroom; instead, Stan generally does something in the kitchen, where he can hear the water running in the bathroom upstairs.

The afternoon/evening of Day 6 (or 7-ish) rolls around.

\-- and then [Glitches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928743) happens --

Several more days pass, following the afternoon/evening of Day 6/7-ish.

Stan hasn’t really seen Ford at all, but the kids have seen him once or twice in-passing while he’s been sequestered with Bill, so he knows his brother is alive, out, and about, at least. Stan’s not worried; he figures Ford would say something to either him or the kids if he ran into a problem with the cultists. In the meantime, Stan has finished thrashing out the majority of the mutual nonaggression agreement with Bill, at least on the definition of and proper agreement-acceptable responses to physical attacks and such. He’s still working on defining the ‘mental attack’ stuff with Bill, and if he hadn’t thought the kid was nuts _before_...

Mealtimes have been getting less and less tense, and as of Day 8, Stan has started pulling Bill out with him into the living room for short one-to-two-hour stretches of time, outside of just mealtimes, sometimes with the kids around but usually they’re not. And up until Day 11, Stan has always made sure to be in the room at all times and largely within tackling distance of Bill whenever the kids are in there with them, just in case. Stan hasn’t has to drag Bill out of the room to force him to cool off (and let him rant himself from anger down to extreme annoyance out of earshot of the kids) for a little more than a full day now.

The morning of Day 11, Stan figures it’s a good time to take the next step when Mabel says that she wants to wash Bill’s hair outside, and talks out some boundaries and limits to what he expects is going to end in a flat-out ‘no’ from Bill -- which will be good for all three of the kids, as far as he’s concerned -- but he doesn’t bother trying to outright explain the agreement to either Mabel or Dipper yet, since he’s not finished working out the last details with Bill. He figures he doesn’t have to, since he’s pretty sure that the kids won’t attack Bill if he doesn’t attack them first. Stan’s pretty much completely convinced by this point that there’s no chance that the ex-triangle is going to be the one to break the agreement they’ve got going first, so long as nothing drastic happens to change or upset that, for reasons. He’s planning on going through everything with all the kids straight-out once the agreement’s pretty much all worked out, and doesn’t see any reason to tell them before then; he sees no reason to explain things twice. So he walks Bill to the Shack’s gift shop (and checks to make sure he’s left the outside door open), and stops to let Wendy know what’s what and to keep an eye on things, just in case. And then Stan deliberately goes back inside, back to the kitchen table, and sits down to read the newspaper and wait for either Dipper and Mabel, or Bill (...or all three of them, bickering...) to come back in.

\-- and then [Aggression](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928890) happens --

It’s a bit later in the morning on Day 11, now.

After having dragged Ford back to the Shack, and upon hearing an explosion outside the barrier and out in the forest, Stan goes outside after Bill. He’s worried enough that he doesn’t leave Ford’s gun behind; he’s worried that he might need it to shoot whatever must’ve been after Bill.

\-- and during the following (shortly after Stan left the Shack to retrieve Bill), [Chapter 1 of Necessity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17724410/chapters/41815244) happens --

Stan finds Bill all-in-one-piece -- and the monster in more pieces than he can count -- and brings Bill back to the (relative) safety of the Shack; they don’t run into Ford on the way. Stan is pretty sure that his brother is probably sulking in the basement after having been pulled off of Bill not ten minutes prior, or at least a little cautious after his warning about Bill’s magic, but he takes the long way around in getting back to the Shack just in case. No point in getting into stupid arguments with his brother if he doesn’t have to. Stan leaves Bill out on the porch, and goes inside to “hide” Ford’s gun in one of the kitchen cabinets, and to give Dipper and Mabel a crash course in the agreement, because apparently he _does_ need to go through this with them sooner rather than later.

\-- and while Stan is inside talking to Dipper and Mabel, [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251) happens --

Noon on Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return rolls around.

Bill’s been sitting out on the porch thinking. Stan has finished talking out agreement-stuff with Dipper and Mabel inside the Shack, and Mabel comes outside to talk to Bill...

\-- and then [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594) happens --

\-- and in the midst of this, [Chapters 2 and 3 of Necessity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17724410/chapters/41815283) happen (see chapter notes) --

Later in the afternoon on Day 11, after the events of [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594), Ford sequesters himself down in the basement lab with Dipper and Mabel, who then try to help their great-uncle put himself back together after what happened out on the porch.

\-- and some of this is related in [Damage / Fallout (to be posted)]() \--

Ford wasn’t feeling too safe before, and he’s feeling even less safe now. He’s worried to distraction about the safety of the niblings, and has no idea what’s going on with his brother, but from what the niblings have related to him that afternoon about what Stan has and hasn’t been doing with Bill, it doesn’t sound good. Ford hasn’t been sleeping well since Bill’s been back, and hasn’t been eating properly since Day 4, and…

We roll around to late-night on Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return.

An entire afternoon and most of an evening has passed since the events of [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594), and Bill is tired and in pain and aching from everything that happened out on the porch, and then some. Bill isn’t happy about a bunch of things that it feels to Bill like Stan practically threw at him out of nowhere, and Bill’s angry that he hadn’t realized before now the implications of a lot of things Stan’s been talking to him about -- some of which Bill’s already agreed to. They’re both still holding to the basics of the agreement for now, but right now everything feels like it’s in flux, and a lot of arguments are on the horizon. Bill isn’t liking the thought that Stan probably isn’t going to want to make any changes to, or give Bill much leeway on, most of what Stan has already gotten; Bill isn’t all that sure that he’s going to be able to talk Stan around on anything all that easily, and what really doesn’t help is that Bill’s **mind hurts** right now. Bill falls asleep thinking that he’s probably going to try and heal himself the next day, like Stanley suggested, and...

\-- ...then [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627) happens --

\-- and then [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063542) happens --

\-- and then [Respect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422541) happens --

It’s still late-night on Day 11, and Stan isn’t too happy to find out that his brother hasn’t been sleeping, probably hasn’t been eating properly, and that things have apparently gotten to the point that they are now at least as bad as they were when Stan first answered Ford’s postcard-call for help, a little more than thirty years ago. Only worse. Because this time, Ford almost shot him, and the kids were in the room with them when it happened. All Stan can get out of Ford is that he doesn’t want Bill talking about “things,” but at least Dipper, and Bill (hell help them all, because heaven sure won’t), are able to explain-things-without-actually-explaining-things via pencil and paper, while they’re all sitting right next to Ford on the floor of the gift shop so he can paranoia-ingly read everything that they’re writing and smack the pencil out of their hands if any of them start writing the wrong thing.

They all eventually work something out and make enough of the right promises to Ford that Stan manages to convince his brother that it really is safe enough for him to fall asleep, for at least a little while, so long as Ford feels like he’s got enough control of things and enough maybe-trustworthy eyes watching Bill that… something horrible won’t happen that nobody can or will stop? So Stan gets Ford and Bill rearranged out on the floor of the living room, and shoos Dipper and Mabel upstairs to bed, and then settles into his recliner couch-chair with a baseball bat in his hands to watch over them while the two of them sleep, in a borderline-mad detente. It’s not the first time Stan’s stayed up almost all night; he’s done it for worse reasons before, and hey, at least he got maybe an hour or two of sleep before this.

Day 11 ends.

Mid-morning of Day 12 finally rolls around, and when Mabel and Dipper are up, Stan sets his bat aside and heads for the kitchen to start making breakfast. He doesn’t see any reason not to. He’s all of five seconds away from walking over there -- two at a run -- and it isn’t like Mabel and Dipper aren’t both armed with guns at this point. Ford should feel safe enough with the two of them on it. They’re good kids.

\-- and then [ The Idiot Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422892) happens --

\-- and in the midst of this, while Bill is outside for those 30 minutes, [Chapter 1 of Illusion IS Reality (and only one of us is a Pines Triplet!)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608020/chapters/38926280) happens --

Stan shepherds everyone through breakfast… somehow… despite all the craziness and disruption, and manages to convince Ford after he’s eaten something that more sleep is in order. Stan will be staying up and awake and promises to keep an ‘actual eye on Bill’ for Ford, ‘yes, he’ll keep Bill within arm’s reach’ at all times and at least five feet away from the kids, ‘yes, he won’t let Bill run loose’ and leave the house for the interim, ‘yes, he’ll stop Bill’ if it sounds like he’s going to start talking about other dimensions like he’s not supposed to… (which Bill just rolls his eyes at, of course). ‘Get some sleep, Ford.’

Ford’s pretty much dead-on-his-feet at this point, since Stan won’t let him have any coffee with breakfast, or any Mabel Juice, either. (Literally hid the stuff.) Ford knows he needs sleep. He either trusts his family, or he doesn’t. ...If he can’t trust his family, he’s doomed anyway, and he knows it, so he goes off to get some sleep in his actual bed... which is helped by Dipper and Mabel coming in after him and promising to stay there with him and guard him while he sleeps. They’re both armed with functional medium-range weaponry. They plan to take shifts paying attention to the door and windows. They tell him they’ll leave the room together for food and bathroom breaks and art supplies -- the twin-buddy system, safety in numbers -- and lock the door behind them when they go, so that Bill can’t get in when they aren’t in there with him. Ford gives them the key to the door so that they can do just that, and lays himself down to sleep...

\-- and then [ Consequences](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608206) happens --

Day 12 ends.

Mid-morning of Day 13 rolls on in, and Stan is MIA for breakfast, because Bill hasn’t woken up yet. Ford is the one who ends up (trying to) make breakfast for the niblings. Eventually, Bill sort-of wakes up, and stumbles his way out of the bedroom, following after Stan. Stan makes breakfast for Bill, and Bill is still pretty darn groggy. (He out-and-out faceplants into his toast at one point.)

Melody shows up, and this is a complete surprise to everybody except Stan -- who had called her to drive on down from Washington state “early” -- and Soos -- who was only happily surprised by the timing, because he had been looking forward to her moving down to Gravity Falls at the end of the summer to live with him and help him run the Shack. (Mabel is thrilled to see her; Dipper is generally happy for Soos.) Melody isn’t walking into anything blind: Stan had told Melody about the situation with Bill being back a few days before, planning to try and have her come down earlier than expected for Bill-related socialization reasons. But after what had happened the previous afternoon out on the porch, Stan had called her up again around dinnertime on Day 12 and talked her into coming down _now_ to “babysit” _both_ Bill **and** Ford. Bill… does not know what to make of this. Or her. _At all._ (Mostly because she’s treating him somewhat nicely, just like she would anybody else.) Ford is, of course, offended by the implication that he might need looking after in any way, shape, or form.

Everyone manages to get through breakfast together again unscathed, and Bill meanders his way outside to the picnic tables without managing to walk face-first into too many walls.

\-- and then [Chapters 2 through 7 of Illusion IS Reality (and only one of us is a Pines Triplet!)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608020/chapters/38926373) happen --

Day 13 ends.

Day 14 rolls around.

Prompted by the visit to his dimension of those other two Bill’s, Bill decides that he’d better start looking outward into the larger multiverse of infinite dimensional sets to see what he can see _now_ , rather than later. Just in case.

Bill knows that he isn’t exactly trusted to be outside the barrier for a few days, though, so Bill ‘puts up with’ staying inside for awhile -- not even venturing out to the picnic tables again -- in part to help Stan keep the peace with Ford until Stan can calm him down a bit again. The other part (of the reason that he was willing to put it off for a bit) is that it takes Bill a few days (all of Day 14 and a bit of Day 15) to come up with a few different things that will work to let him look at places without his All-Seeing Eye, anyway.

But on Day 15 he does come up with something, and when he does he ends his seemingly self-imposed ‘house arrest’, walking himself right outside the barrier to sit down at the picnic tables again. It doesn’t take him long before he finds an odd dimensional anomaly that he wants to look into. Bill doesn’t know what to make of it, and it takes him another full day to figure out how he’s going to proceed further.

The afternoon of Day 16 rolls around, and Dipper is spending the day with Ford “out in town” (read: at the mansion with Fiddleford, but they don’t want Bill to know). Melody, Mabel, and Stan are in the Shack, in the main part of the house, just ‘hanging out’ together. Bill has things to do, so he’s outside at the picnic tables, having just swiped Mabel’s phone while she (and everybody else) wasn’t looking...

\-- and then [What Would Tesla Do](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303577) happens --

It’s a little before dinnertime on Day 16 when Bill heads inside after Mabel, and it starts raining shortly thereafter. Bill goes off to the bedroom he’s sharing with Stan to lay down for awhile before dinner; he’s tired.

Melody had been paying attention earlier that day when Bill tried to hide his new phone from her behind his back while he was outside. Melody hadn’t been able to see what Bill had been holding, but she did tell both Stan and Mabel about it at the time, to get more watchful eyes on him. So when Mabel comes back inside and checks the arm-sofa to find her phone there, Mabel still tells both Stan and Melody what she saw Bill with outside.

Stan thinks about it for a minute, and how Bill looked when he came inside, and tells them to hold off on worrying about it until after dinner, at least. Stan pays the usual attention to Bill during dinnertime, sussing out a few things from what he asks Bill and how Bill responds to it all _without_ asking him directly about the new phone, and after seeing how Bill is acting and responding to things, Stan makes a decision. Once Bill’s gone back off to the bedroom again, Stan tells Melody and Mabel that it’s all right for Bill to have the phone, and not to worry about it. Stan does ask them to help him out by keeping an eye out and pay attention to when he uses it, so that they can tell him later if they see him doing it, but to not make a big deal out out it if he does pull it out in front of them. They both agree to help out.

Dipper and Ford end up staying the night over at Fiddleford’s place, but none of the three of them get much sleep; they’re working instead. It rains all night.

Day 16 ends.

Bill is left twitchy and in a foul mood for a week (Days 17 through 22) as he waits for the connection to synchronize again, because he has nothing else he can do or figure out at the moment about what’s going on in that other dimension, and he doesn’t particularly like what he’s been reading so far.

(There are some bright spots and high points during the week, but for the most part he’s in a foul mood overall.)

Bill doesn’t like not knowing things, and he’s not too comfortable with some of the thoughts he’s been having about that other Bill, who doesn’t seem nearly as alike to him as Miz and Seb were. However, he can’t fix his current level of ignorance until the communication line coming from that other dimension becomes time-synchronized with the dimension he’s currently standing in, again. And he can’t do anything about that without either outing himself to the rest of that multiverse -- and that other Bill -- or potentially accidentally destabilizing the whole tangled thing instead.

During this week of time, one of those thoughts about that other Bill that has Bill all twitchy is whether or not he actually can defend himself and his Zodiac and secure his dimension against another version of himself. (“Needs to” isn’t even a question anymore -- Bill realizes after a point that, even if this particular Bill isn’t a problem, that surely there will be at least one version of himself out there that _would_ be a problem.) And shortly after that, he also realizes that it could even be problematic if it was “just” another energy being in one of those other dimensional sets, one that some other Bill hasn’t killed, that might have gotten powerful enough to challenge him now. So Bill spends a good portion of his time trying to think of things that would work against a ‘being of pure energy’ version of himself… and is getting nowhere fast. This is largely because he became a being of pure energy in the first place and set up his energy form in such a way as to make it pretty much impossible to kill him. So trying to think up more ways that might work is something Bill is finding… difficult, to say the least.

Bill hasn’t completely realized it yet, but he’s gotten used to feeling safe in this dimension with Stan. And having that threatened… _is_ having an impact on him. So is the fact that, as part of trying to think of ways to hurt, contain, or kill a ‘energy form’ version of himself, the glaring weaknesses that he currently has in his “human-ish” form are being thrown into stark relief by comparison.

...which is yet another thing that Bill does not like one bit.

So Bill’s mood just continues to get worse, and worse, and worse over the course of this week of time. And Bill ends up acting more and more withdrawn by the day, as the week progresses -- by the end of the week, he’s spending almost all of his time sticking to the shared bedroom, not doing much out in the open around or with the rest of the family, and barely talking to anyone either, not even Stan.

...and Stan notices this.

But Bill is not only twitchy for that reason. He is also getting more and more impatient about the whole thing over the course of the week, in being forced to wait for the connection to go active again before writing to them some more, because every time he thinks about it (and he thinks about it a lot that week), he just ends up thinking of more and more that he wants to say to them. And as part-and-parcel of this, Bill realizes that it would be difficult for him to get the information across that he wants to write to them in small chunks of a mere handful of thoughts each time, at 500 characters or less per “ask”. Bill also doesn’t like the idea of being interrupted in the middle of trying to tell the WWTD trio what they should do, either. So Bill starts considering the idea of writing several things for them in-advance, so that he can send them to the trio all-at-once as soon as the connection goes active again. (...Not that he will admit that he is potentially being helpful to the WWTD trio in any way, or that he may have already picked a side in that conflict...) He is very back-and-forth on the idea for awhile, though.

In the meantime, Bill ends up trying different things during the week to kick himself out of his ‘getting nowhere fast’ (really, looking for inspiration, though he doesn’t realize this and certainly would not think to put it that way himself). During one of these periods when he’s stuck on trying to make progress, Bill ends up looking over parts of the internet that’s in the dimension that he connected his phone to, that the WWTD folks blog is being archived in and to (a.k.a. “our dimension”, and our tumblr). Because he didn’t pick up any connections from other dimensions to this dimension, he found it odd that so many ‘anonymous askers’ seemed to know about “Bill Cipher” at all. So the first thing he does, once it occurs to him to do it, is to search for his own name on the Tumblr website. ...And Bill ends up reading a few things that make him annoyed, but ultimately he just shrugs it all off. (He had to deal with that annoying “Flatland” book before in a few dimensions, and its author, so stumbling across a dimension where his Zodiac’s lives are apparently some sort of TV show entertainment isn’t too off-the-wall to his mode of thinking. Infinite dimensions, and all that. He doesn’t bother looking to see if all the fine details are accurate or not, or how accurate they are in general, once he learns from the broadstrokes that apparently none of his motivations were on display there.)

...And, because of all this, he decides to (and does) stick to reading things and interacting only on “our” internet, instead of the one in the dimension he’s currently living in. This is largely because of the agreement he has with Stan -- he _knows_ that no-one he talks to on “our” internet could _possibly_ show up at Stan’s doorstep, because believes that we’re all stuck here and can have no impact on him -- he didn’t pick up any other connections to “our” dimension other than the WWTD one to “our” dimension. And if anyone reads anything from him on the WWTD or elsewhere, well… who would ever believe that he was himself, when the only “Bill Cipher” anyone in “our” dimension thinks of is some sort of imaginary cartoon character?

Doing all this, though, actually involves Bill physically pulling out and using his phone. But when Bill is reading things, it’s actually very easy for him to get too focused on what he’s reading, and not so much on his surroundings. (This is mainly because he’s not used to being in a body, yet and still, and this impacts his mental focus greatly.) Bill is even somewhat aware of this problem, because of how he was sort-of caught with the phone outside by Mabel, and almost caught with it by Melody before that. (He doesn’t realize that Melody, Mabel, and Stan have all talked about him having a phone already.)

So Bill decides (at first) to restrict himself to not using the phone unless he’s in Stan’s bedroom alone. (This is mainly because Bill has a pretty good idea of how Ford would react to him having access to a communications device, and he doesn’t want anyone taking it away from him because of Ford’s anger or panic. Bill is too busy with other things to even think of using it to try and mess with Ford for the hell of it just then, and Bill now thinks of the agreement as having two ‘riders’ to it, with Mabel and Dipper’s mental health and well-being dependent upon Ford’s physical and mental health, at least in part, in the short-term, as Bill understands it. And Bill knows that Stan doesn’t want either of them rocking the boat too much. Given the current state of things at the Shack, and with Stan himself, Bill is going along with it for now.)

However, Bill isn’t very good at splitting his focus (and never has been, for reasons), so he still underestimates how distracted and “tuned in” he can get even when he’s trying not to focus on just one thing. Thus, while Bill is able to hide the phone quickly enough that it isn’t seen the first couple of times that Stan walks in on him in the bedroom (the door is loud, and Stan always knocks first if he knows Bill is in there), he doesn’t make it past Day 19 before he looks up at one point, during that afternoon, to see Stan sitting in the bed across from him, working on a crossword puzzle, _while Bill has his phone out in full display_.

Bill is shocked at this, and shoves the phone back into his pocket quickly. Stan doesn’t comment on the phone, though, and because Bill knows exactly what response Ford would have to seeing him with something like that, Bill thinks at first that Stan just didn’t see it. This happens a couple more times over the course of the next few days, though, each time with Stan not reacting to him having it out… and Bill begins to internalize the thought that ‘him having a phone’ isn’t a big deal at all. This leads Bill to believe that him having a phone is, in fact, so much of a non-issue that Stan doesn’t even seem to be noticing that he has one, let alone that he’s using it.

And, shortly after this, it occurs to Bill that maybe if he had outright told Stan that he wanted a phone like Mabel’s… that Stan might have actually gone and gotten and given him one to use. Bill begins to believe this as the days pass, not least of which is because any time he’s told Stan that he’s wanted anything else before, Stan has either outright literally _given_ it to him or “negotiated” him into wanting something else that is _better_ in some way.

So, because of this, by the end of the week, Bill is a lot more relaxed about when he pulls his phone out and when he doesn’t (though he does still put it away again -- much more casually, not worried at all -- whenever he does realize that someone else is in the room with him that might start talking to him).

...which is _exactly_ what Stan wanted.

The morning of Day 23 rolls around and Bill finally “breaks down” and starts writing up what he is going to send to them. But because he is actively trying to balance what he thinks the impact of what he writes may have if they follow his instructions, he decides that he is going to leave a few things out (like looking for any proto-rift in the basement lab) on purpose, for that reason.

It’s early-afternoon on Day 23, just after lunchtime, and Bill is alone in the bedroom he is sharing with Stan and has just finished writing up his “plans” to the WWTD trio when the communication line goes active again.

\-- and then [The Best-Written Plans... (but this ain’t one of them…)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16351346) happens --

Bill heads out of the bedroom and goes out to the kitchen to make and eat some dinner.

Bill is busy for the rest of the night with ‘thinking up and thinking through some ways and means that he could “deal with” any beings of pure energy he might have to ‘handle’ by using magic rather than weirdness’. He’s been working on that for the past week (and was getting nowhere fast before), but that night he finally has a breakthrough and starts making some actual progress on some things that might actually work if he ever has to fight another ‘him’.

Finally feeling capable of defending himself and putting up a decent fight against all-comers, _up to and including other Bills_ , helps a lot in reducing Bill’s stress levels. ...Stanley notices this, too.

Day 23 ends.

Day 24 begins. Bill makes himself busy all morning, the afternoon of Day 24 rolls around, and Bill is in the kitchen with the rest of the Pines family, making lunch for himself, when his phone goes off in his pocket.

\-- and then [Presentation and Packaging](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608698) happens --

A few days go by, and Bill is checking the ‘hyperdimensional whatsit connection’ on a daily basis for problems, despite the fact that the connection isn’t becoming active all that often in the meantime. He’s mostly avoiding actually reading what’s being posted to it for the moment.

It’s the early evening of Day 31...

\-- and then the first part of [Chapter 1 of Transdimensional Tumblr!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608821) happens --

It’s the afternoon of Day 33, Bill is out at the picnic tables outside again... 

\-- and then the rest of [Chapter 1 (and Chapter 2) of Transdimensional Tumblr!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608821) happens --

Two days later, it’s the afternoon of Day 35, and Bill and Stanley are sitting in (and on) Stanley’s sofa-chair in the living room of the Shack. Dipper and Mabel are hanging out on the floor of the living room, while Ford is in the kitchen eating something at the kitchen table. Bill is checking Miz’s tumblr again...

\-- and then [Chapters 3 through 6 of Transdimensional Tumblr!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608821) happen --

Day 35 ends.

Day 36 begins, and Ford, Mabel, and Dipper are “out for the day.” Melody is getting more training at running the gift shop from Wendy. Soos is running the Shack, as usual. Stan and Bill basically have the living area of the Shack to themselves.

The afternoon of Day 36 rolls around, and Bill and Stanley are in the living room sofa-chair and at the kitchen table, respectively, all by themselves.

\-- and then [Frustration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746820) happens --

The evening of Day 36 rolls around…

\-- and then [Correspondence with a Human Triangle-Demon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16747087) happens --

Bill and Stanley finish up dinner. Ford, Dipper, and Mabel finally make it home for the night.

The morning of Day 37 rolls around, and Bill is in the kitchen getting breakfast with the entire Pines family when he sees an absolutely enthralling post by Miz!Bill on her blogsite.

Day 37 is taken up by Bill and Mabel working on a craft project together that is inspired by said blogpost, and then getting it set up out-of-doors.

Day 38 is June 22 -- Summerween! (Bill sleeps in a bit that day, but not quite enough to skip breakfast. This is because Stan has gotten him into the habit of not skipping meals -- _or else_ he’ll run into energy problems not too far into the day, and Bill has learned this by this point for this not to be a point of debate, too. Bill has also learned -- from experience -- not to show up any later than a certain hour for each of those three meals a day. He knows this because if he tries to, Stan will come and find him and interrupt him until he either heads to the kitchen or pulls out a box of ‘emergency food’ -- e.g., a box of crackers and bottled water -- and actually eats and drinks something. Bill has generally settled on eating things in the kitchen being less disruptive overall, than having to eat something in front of Stan at whatever location he’s currently at when Stan finds him.)

(The events of Day 37 and Day 38 are discussed in a retrospective given in Chapter 1 of [Summerween: The Aftermath!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723558/chapters/41813354))

Day 39 rolls around, and it’s the morning and raining outside when Bill is in the attic, thinking about the past two days, as he pulls out his phone to look at Miz!Bill’s blog again.

(Bill does not sleep in late on Day 39, despite the continuing low-level fatigue he’s feeling from the two very-active days he’s had prior. He’s still sticking to the schedule Stan has gotten him and his body used to, over the course of about a month.)

\-- and then [Chapter 1 (and 2) of Summerween: The Aftermath!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723558/chapters/41813354) happens --

After going through Miz!Bill’s posts and trying to answer and respond to things as best he could, it’s mid-morning of Day 39, and Bill (thinking he can’t feel much worse than he already does) decides to check the WWTD blog, because why not?

\-- and then [Chapter 3 (and 4, and the rest) of Summerween: The Aftermath! (to be posted)]() happens --

Bill isn’t well pleased with how the day ended. And, he’s beyond tired at this point, after everything that happened that night.

Day 39 ends.

Day 40 rolls around.

Bill is tired as heck.

\-- and then [Tipping Point (to be posted)]() happens --

It’s pretty late at night (almost midnight, which is far later than Bill has ever stayed up since his second lease on life yet, on a day that has tired Bill out more than usual), and Bill pretty much collapses and passes out right after putting down his phone, after that.

Day 41 rolls around, and Bill is still sleeping (later in the morning than he usually is due to the fatigue), while the rest of the Pines are already up and nearly finished with eating their own breakfasts downstairs...

\-- and then [Coming Clean (to be posted)]() happens --

Day 41 ends.

Day 42 rolls around...

\-- and then [The Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Very-Bad Visit of Anti-Bill (to be posted)]() happens --

Day 42 ends.

Day 43 rolls around...

\-- and then [The Music of a Heart That Requires Mending (to be posted)]() happens --

Day 43 ends.

Day 44 (the 28th of June) rolls around...

\-- and then there is a _MASSIVE upcoming crossover with Mizuuma!!_ woohoo! :) --


End file.
